22 Apr 2015

Justice Key Dingake of Gaborone High Court has reserved judgement in a case in which an HIV positive foreign prison inmate is asking government to provide him with free Anti-Retroviral Therapy treatment.

The applicant, Gift Mwale, who is serving a seven-year prison sentence for robbery, is currently buying the drugs for himself and has since told the court that he is left with a month supply.

Mwale represented by attorneys, Mr Friday Leburu and Mr Kabo Motswagole argued in his court papers that if government failed to provide him with drugs, it should free him to look for money to continue his medication as he was unable to meet his supply demand while inside prison.

He said he should stand to benefit from the decision of Justice Bengbame Sechele’s ruling of August 22, 2014 that directed that all foreign prison inmates who had approached the threshold of Highly Active Antiretroviral therapy (HAART) should be enrolled for the provision of free ARV treatment.

However, when the case resumed on Monday, state attorney from Attorney General Chambers, Ms Yarona Sharp asked the court to set aside supplementary papers in the form on annexures because they were not filed properly.

She said the move by the applicant had demonstrated that he had failed to show that his CD4 count had reached a threshold, which was in line with HAART guidelines provision.
Ms Sharp also said the applicant had another similar case pending before the same court and as such should wait to benefit from its ruling that was due on April 29.

However, Mr Leburu said they had proven that Mwale had reached HAART guidelines on 350 CD4 count, adding that Mwale’s founding affidavit had clearly indicated that he was already on treatment and had reached the threshold.

For his part, Mr Motswagole told the court that Mwale had nothing to do with the other case before Judge Terrence Rannowane, as he was never an applicant but was merely brought during the proceedings and had never even rose to give any account. Ends